He plays golf at Hidden Meadows twice a week and he also bowls once a week from Labor Day weekend until early May at the Old Town Bowling Center, which is candlepin.

“I try to keep on the move. I’ve always been active. I’m doing something all the time. It’s just the way I’ve always been,” said Thibodeau. “I like to live [life].”

When the two sports overlap, he is even busier.

“But it’s good,” he says.

His relationship with golf began when he was “9 or 10.”

“I started caddying at the Penobscot Valley Country Club,” he said. “But they didn’t let us play. The only time we could play was when they held their caddy tournament once a year.”

He caddied until he was 16.

Thibodeau eventually went into the Navy and served in the Pacific in World War II.

After he returned, Bob Girvan opened the Kenduskeag Golf Course and Thibodeau began hitting the golf ball on a regular basis.

“We used to pay a dollar a day at that time. I’d play from daylight until dark,” said Thibodeau, who has had a variety of jobs during his life including being a shoe shop hand sewer and a plow-truck driver at the University of Maine.

He retired just shy of his 65th birthday.

His oldest son, George Jr., buys him a yearly membership to Hidden Meadows and he takes advantage of it.

He walks the course rather than take a golf cart and he considers the strength of his game to be his driving.

“I drive it pretty good … 200 yards … maybe a little over. And I hit the fairways pretty well,” said Thibodeau. “I do pretty well. I usually shoot in the 40s [over the par 35, 9-hole course]. But the ball doesn’t go where I want it all the time.”

“He’s just amazing. He’s quite a guy,” said Old Town’s Neil Labbe.

Labbe and wife, Cindy, often play with Thibodeau.

“The first time he went out this year, he hit his first drive 200 yards right down the middle,” said Labbe. “He’s also good around the greens. He has the whole game. And he plays from the men’s tees, not the seniors’ tees.”

Labbe also said they don’t have to wait for Thibodeau.

“I’m in my 50s and he plays just as fast as we do,” said Labbe. “And after he plays, he’ll go mow his lawn and work in the garden. He never sits around.”

“He’s a wonderful man. He’s a lot of fun to be with. He always has a lot of energy,” added Cindy Labbe.